S01E13: When Q1 is reviewed

In this week’s episode, Samantha and Matilda review the first quarter of the year - what they planned to do, what they managed to do, and what is getting kicked into the next few months.

Next week Sam and Matilda will start a new topic: Writing as marketing. The first discussion point will be X meets Y marketing!

Where to find Sam and Matilda:

SAM IG: @sammowrimo

Website: www.samantha-cummings.com

Book to start with: The Deathless - https://www.amazon.co.uk/Deathless-Frances-June/dp/B0915V5L6F

Most recent book: Curse of the Wild (Moons & Magic Book 1) https://amzn.eu/d/fVXwW3j

MATILDA IG: @matildaswiftauthor

Website: MatildaSwift.com

Book to start with: https://books2read.com/TheSlayoftheLand (book #1 of The Heathervale Mysteries)

Most recent book: https://books2read.com/ButterLatethanNever (book #3 of The Slippery Spoon Mysteries)

Mentioned on the show:

Wiser than Me with Julie Louis-Dreyfus: https://lemonadamedia.com/show/wiser-than-me-with-julia-louis-dreyfus/

Transcript:

Welcome to your next step of the Self Publishing Mountain.

I'm Matilda Swift, author of Quintessentially British Cozy Mysteries.

And I'm Samantha Cummings, author of Young Adult Books about Magic, Myths and Monsters.

I've written the books, changed their covers, tweaked their blurbs, tried tools from a dozen ad courses, and I'm still not seeing success.

Now, we're working together to plot and plan our way from barely making ends meet to pulling in a living wage.

Join us on our journey where we'll be mastering the pen to snag that paycheck.

Hello and welcome to Pen to Paycheck Authors podcast.

I'm Sam Cummings, here with my co-host Matilda Swift, and we're here to write our way to financial success.

We're two indie authors with over a dozen books between us and still a long way to go towards the quit the day job dream.

If that sounds familiar, listen along for our Mastery Through Missteps journey.

Each week, we cover a topic to help along the way.

This week's topic is going to be our first quarterly review.

But before that, let's do our wins and whinges of the week.

I don't know why I've never done that before, because I love them.

This is going to be every week for now and every week.

I'm not sure I've got specific wins or whinges of the week, because they're sort of going to feed into the quarterly thing.

So I think everything that is going right and wrong for me equally is going right and wrong on an immediate level and a grand scale.

So there's nothing particularly unique about this week.

I mean, oh gosh, a ladybird just flew out of my hair.

No, because it's a bad, invasive ladybird, and it's one that keeps flying around this house.

So I'm just going to get rid of that.

Sorry, this is unusual.

It's just auspicious stuff.

I guess it's a little suspicious.

I literally scratched my head and a ladybird fell off it.

It feels magical.

Let's just say it's a magical sign.

Okay, so I think it's magical.

I'd hope so, but yeah, I'm a bit worried.

Are there more?

So yes, this week I did a sort of a win in that I had the most wonderful weekend away.

I am incredibly fortunate to live in just sort of the most magical part of England.

So I live between Manchester and Leeds in a very creative, artistic sort of community area.

And all around here are other fantastic, beautiful, small little towns.

And one that is half an hour away on a bus that goes right past my house, like you can see it sort of alarmingly close to my front window every single day, it's the Bronte bus.

It goes to Howarth, where the Brontes lived.

And the whole town has really made its entire industry out of being the place where the Brontes are from.

So Brontes is in the author Bronte Sisters and their feckless brother, Bramwell.

So they have all sorts of fantastic, lovely little cafes there and like cute little shops and little book shops and gift shops.

And it's just very lovely cobbly street.

And they've got a heritage steam train line that goes through, which goes through the train station where The Rare World Children was filmed.

The original, not the remake, obviously.

Yeah, original all the way.

So it goes through that.

They've also got a walk to what they call the Bronte waterfall, which I had very low hopes for because I thought they're like three sisters who are very short-lived, live with their dad in a parsonage, and their, again, feckless brother.

Do they have good taste in waterfalls?

They didn't have Netflix back then.

What are they comparing it to?

It was great.

It was absolutely beautiful.

So it was a lovely walk away.

And sort of again, magically, in fact, as I was walking there, it goes across.

The place I live is the Moors, basically, like think Cathy and Heathcliff, those beautiful Moors.

It's a bit wild and windswept, but it was just a fantastic sunny weekend.

So I was walking along this bit of Moor to get to the Bronte waterfall, basically living everyone's literary dream.

Off to the left, it was a bank holiday weekend, so relatively busy, you know, the people around, but off to the left I saw what like a barn owl.

And I was thinking, that can't be a barn owl because it's four in the afternoon.

It's bright daylight on a lovely blue sunny day.

Either imagining it or it looks like a barn owl and isn't a barn owl.

But I grew up on the owl who's afraid of the dark.

Plop the owl.

I've seen him many times in books.

It's just like that, but not a cartoon.

So I thought that must be that.

People have also read Harry Potter.

I've seen it in that.

Yeah, it's that sort of owl.

And I thought it can't be that, but I was walking along and every time I got closer, it would fly up, fly along about a metre or two, and then fly back down again.

So it's like it wanted me to watch it.

No one else seemed to notice this.

So I thought, I'm imagining this.

It was also just a little bit too far away for me to be certain it was a barn owl, because again, it was the daytime.

So I thought, not a barn owl.

Sounds like some sort of fey creature trying to tempt you into following it.

I thought it was going to look like a bear for a while because owls are a bit, you know, deathly.

I do have an owl bag that I love that I took on the steam train the day before.

So I also thought maybe the owls have taken me as one of their own.

Anyway, so then I passed this bit of moor and it flew away and I continued to the Brontid Waterfall.

I went to the waterfall, it was beautiful.

Just like I came there slightly too late in the day, later than I'd wanted to, but it was like the exact perfect time in fact because the sun was setting just like over the, like crest between the valleys.

It just was setting into the waterfall.

It was idyllic.

And then I walked back again.

And as I was working back, as I hit this bit of moor again, there was a bird man, like a man in a sensible blue jacket with binoculars on his neck.

I thought that is the person that's going to know about barn owls.

So I just walked up to him and I said, what's the animal that I saw that looks like a barn owl, but obviously doesn't barn owl, because it's a daytime.

And he said, it's a barn owl.

I thought, excellent.

Always good to ask questions.

And he was there looking for a different owl.

He was there looking for a short-eared owl.

And then I asked him an even stupider question, which I said, like, oh, how would I know if I've seen a short-eared owl, aside from obviously the ears?

And he gave some descriptions, but I was like, oh, you know what, I'll maybe leave you to that, to like binocular people.

But anyway, it just felt really magical.

So I did some writing, but mostly had like a magic experience.

Are you secretly just living in a novel?

A little bit, yeah.

I saw the pictures on Instagram.

Yeah, it looked absolutely stunning.

I'm like so, so jealous.

It looked amazing.

Yeah, but I could be there every weekend.

So I went on Thursday night after my day job finished, went straight from work, half an hour on the bus.

Literally the bus goes outside my house.

Got off the bus, went to my, again, it was like the quaintest little guest house that seemed like it should be in and I get the Christie murder mystery.

It was a little bit creaky.

The walls were quite thin.

You got breakfast in the morning, so everyone was huddled around eating breakfast and looking at each other suspiciously.

I can't believe anybody got murdered.

But anyway, no one did.

Again, I got a steam train, no one got murdered.

But it was like I was in a different, it's like I had to cross in between dramas all weekend and didn't quite settle in.

But I could be doing that every weekend.

So absolutely a win.

Did not get as much writing as I wanted to, because I was trying to write and also have a relaxing weekend, which you can at the both at the same time.

But it was just fantastic.

So yeah, have you got a win or a winch to beat that?

I don't have one to beat that.

My winch is that I didn't have that.

I actually can't even think what happened to me last week.

I took the week off completely.

I did put things in my planner, like little bits and bobs to do.

But I finished my read through of the novel that I'm going to be releasing later in the year.

So I was just mulling over my editing plan slash tactic.

And I thought, you know what?

I'm just going to think about it for this week and not actually do any work.

And that was really good.

And it was a very nice week off.

So that's my win, is that I actually took a week off, which I haven't done since.

I mean, not even, I guess Christmas maybe.

I think I might have taken the week off at Christmas.

But that's not really often, you're just too busy to do any writing.

Yeah, that's true.

But yeah, I've been working solidly since January, like six days a week usually.

So yeah, it was just nice to just take my foot off the gas and contemplate my life choices.

I wonder, is it all worth it?

Okay, I mean, that is big, we're going to do that in a minute.

But yeah, one thing I've definitely been trying to do recently that has maybe come out of our discussions is take more time for thinking deliberately, not feel like I'm on a hamster wheel.

So this weekend, I think I mentioned a couple of times now, I'd written the beginning of the book, decided it was good but not great enough and decided to restart.

And I sat down this weekend and restarted it and it was the right sort of thing.

And I wrote the first couple of pages of it and I was like, I'm not quite sure this is exactly what I'm looking for.

So then I just took a break for the day, came back the next day, started again.

I was like, this is it.

Or I think this is it anyway.

But I was like, I really wish I'd spent more time thinking about it and not feeling like I have to be under any pressure to be speeding ahead.

Which is really good.

So I hope this kind of ties into our topic, which is topic of the week.

Quarterly review.

So this is podcast episode 13.

So we've done a full quarter of episodes, and we thought we'd take the chance to think back over progress.

Hopefully this will be helpful as a kind of keeping ourselves to account, but also like judging what we do and don't get done, I think.

So yeah, how have you done this quarter?

And in what ways has it moved you closer to your full-time writing goal?

Oh, I feel like I have come on leaps and bounds in this first quarter.

I really do.

I had...

It's like fully positive.

Like the whole me saying like I'm contemplating my life choices is just more because I was stuck in like a thought paralysis this afternoon where I didn't know what I was doing.

But everything, like all of the stuff that I actually looked over, I made like a huge list of all the things that I've done this quarter and I made a list of the things that I didn't quite get done that I'm going to move into next quarter.

So I did loads of things like mentally and also did the work like reestablished my brand.

So obviously we did like brand and niche work.

And I feel like that has really set me up for a win because I for the first time feel like I know exactly who I am in my writing career and I can visualize the journey that I want to go on.

Like I know what books I want to put out.

And if we hadn't have been doing this podcast and having all this accountability, I would just be like flailing like I was before and just focusing on producing, I don't want to say producing content, but producing work just for the sake of it.

And now I'm thinking about it, which I never do and don't tend to think about a lot of things.

I just do, do, do.

So yeah, like I feel really like set up for success in terms of branding and mindset as well.

Like reading some mindset books and things.

I just feel like I have grown as a writer and also feel more like an adult, which is sometimes not what I want to feel like.

But sometimes it is what I want to feel like because I started to think about like publishing as a business.

And that's, I think that's probably the biggest mindset.

Positive like check mark on my list is kind of like looking at myself as a legitimate business person.

I'm going to interrupt now and talk a bit about my kind of process of what I've done slash not done.

Yeah.

Yeah.

So I said I've had the whole like, it's been a long weekend, so I've had a four day weekend off, and I thought within that I will both manage to relax, restart a whole new book and think about that and also do a lot of like process and planning things and what I end up doing is what I do all the time, is like a little bit of all those things and felt satisfied overall.

But I think it's really hard to think, step back and kind of be, look at yourself in the abstract.

So that's definitely something I'm working on at the moment, though I think I'm having therapy at the moment, that's really helping like assess yourself kind of from a distance and think about what am I, what like stories am I telling about myself versus like, what is the actual situation?

So I think I have done, like you, absolutely tons I would never have done otherwise.

I feel really satisfied in that I haven't done everything humanly possible, and I am not some sort of superhero who has suddenly in the last three months become a writing millionaire and got everything in place.

So I tend so much to see the things I haven't done.

And I did think about preparing this review, like, oh, should I write down everything I have done?

And I really put that off.

And that's part of me putting off the process in which I'm still out and putting things off, or the type of thing I'm putting off.

I have not made any of my process and plans that I really want to do.

I want to write down the process of uploading a book, formatting a book.

And it's not a big thing.

Do I not have time?

I don't know.

I genuinely don't know right now.

Do I not have the time or am I telling myself I don't have the time?

I think it's a mix of the two.

Like I genuinely am incredibly busy.

You are a very busy person, but also sometimes I think those processes are better to write when you're doing the process.

So if you've not published a book in this time, which you haven't, then writing down that process is now, just might not be beneficial.

It might just be better to have that.

That's like something to do when you next publish a book.

And then you'll have that for future stuff.

But when I'm next publishing a book, I'll be panicked and like doing it last minute.

Yes.

But I know I could not do that.

You will be in the mindset.

And I think that sometimes is a bit more helpful.

Rather than trying to predict or trying to remember, you'll be doing it there and then and you can make sure your notes are thorough.

Yeah, so I do feel like at the moment I got things like that.

Like I've mostly just added to my list or things like that.

And like reading more mindset books and, you know, making this podcast is another thing to add to the list.

And so I do feel at the moment that, and I feel it's generally in my life, right?

Is it like I'm not saying all the time, I'm saying right now, is that I'm currently adding a lot of things that are really useful.

And then I'm scolding myself because I haven't done anything.

And it's like, no, no, you've basically doubled your workload, like life-wise, and you're getting maybe, you know, 1.5 times the amount of things done as you were before.

And you're feeling bad about not getting two times the amount of things done.

So I feel like I'm getting a lot of stuff done.

I'm just, I'm still, one thing I'm still really lacking is like being able to manage my expectations for myself and like setting reasonable goals for myself.

But also, I like how to balance that with like, you know, you hear about the success stories and stuff publishing, and it's always people who are like, I got a, you know, a successful book and I like then work 19 hours a day nonstop and like ran with that.

And it's like, there is definitely a hard work mentality.

And I'm a hard work person, like I'm a put in the graph person.

So it feels really tricky to not measure myself by the quantity of work done.

Yeah, and we talked about this kind of before we were recording.

It's like, I'm constantly adding like 15 things to my to do this every day when I know it's a fact that can only fit in five to seven, like, judging on the kind of size of things I tend to add.

So I think my Q1 review, if I step back and really think about it, everything I've done has been leaped and bound from where I was.

Like if I looked at like the comparative quarter, not even that, but like the quarter has gone, like the quarter end of last year, you know, I have done enormous things in terms of like rethinking my mindset, stuff that is really essential to set myself up for long term success.

So really thinking about not just like the branding things we've done, but like, what do I want to aim as a writer?

Like aiming really big, being able to say the beginning of this book wasn't good enough, and I want to start again, because I want to make a really big pitch.

Like that's something I could never have said, certainly by myself.

So I think like everything from these discussions has just like taken me miles from where I was before.

But yeah, I think one thing that I really do still need to work on is like my self-evaluation and my expectation for myself, because I did really want to make something this week to like really value where I've gone and like appreciate all my journey.

And I haven't, I'm just sat here thinking, haven't I done enough?

No, you definitely should this week make a list like I've done.

And like with less pressure now, because you don't have to do it for the podcast, you can just do this for yourself.

But make a list of all the things that you have actually accomplished, because I think there'll probably be a lot more than you realize.

And even though you will obviously have things to put on your list of things still to do, like that doesn't matter, because we don't want to like top load this year.

This whole thing that we're doing is supposed to be to create a balanced writing life that is sustainable and scalable.

I do also think like a lot of stuff that I've done.

So when I was looking back over things that we've done, I've done a little bit of a lot of things.

I think that feels dissatisfying to me, because I really like to be like, you know, set a big goal and achieve it.

I haven't posted on Facebook every week.

We set that goal when I absolutely haven't done it.

I've posted on Facebook a couple of times, and I've got better at posting on Instagram, but I have not set up any sort of consistent...

I've not magically become a consistent, persistent person in social media.

I don't know how I thought I might actually do that.

I do set myself a schedule.

Like, I think...

I think I have done, achieved that in some areas of my life, so I've become much better at, like, processing, like getting things out of place in my personal life.

So like, today, this afternoon, I batch cook meals for the week and that's done.

It wasn't difficult.

It's done now.

I'm going to be healthier during the week.

I just need to get those things done for publishing things as well, but I don't have to do everything at once.

So yeah, so I haven't, I think I could only do the places where I hadn't got it down to a, you know, quite down to a fine art yet, but I have posted more on Facebook, I have posted more on Instagram.

I have also rethought how much I want to do in that area, right?

We took about a couple weeks ago, like, actually, I don't think it's going to move the needle, so what I want to do is focus more on my mailing list, which I have re-nigelized the last couple of months, and I want to really say, I'm going to have a rethink of that and get that up and up and going in like a very targeted, focused way.

Yes, same.

That's on my What To Do in Q2 is mailing list, and I'm not going to go through this, because obviously this is a first quarter thing, but I do have things at that mailing list.

Could you go through your Q1 review somewhat?

Because I think you've done it much more organized than I have.

Yes, I'll go through the list.

Let's bring this book over here.

So, it's very not written in any order.

I'll just go through and say all the things that I've thought of at the time.

So, my branding goals and my genre slash niche, I feel very secure in all of that stuff.

Starting to act like I'm running a business.

So, I've had something else that kind of tied into this, which is basically setting up my bank account, business bank account, and registering with HMRC, which I've put off forever.

So, like, that's what I mean about like feeling like, I don't know if I said this on the podcast or if I said it before we were doing it, about feeling like an adult.

I think I said it whilst we were recording.

That's like very adult things that I always put off.

I have started looking at and keeping an eye on my genre on Amazon, so top 100s and looking at my comp authors.

So I, that is something that I never used to do for fear of like feeling competitive or feeling like I wasn't doing a good job.

I just would avoid whatever people were doing.

But I do really think that there is a benefit to understanding what's going on in the genre.

You can't just like, I'm just such a bury my head in the sound person that this for the last three months, I've been looking around like, wow, this is what the world looks like.

But I think like previously, I've done a lot of looking at my genre, but without any feeling like I could use that information, because it just feels like so much and self publishing moves incredibly quickly.

So you can see trends come and go.

It's like, what am I doing by watching these trends?

There's nothing I can do about it, because I've already planned out the rest of this year.

I don't write full time.

I don't write fast enough.

So it definitely feels like it can be easy to put your head in the sand.

What I have recently, and I say recently, like I do mean today and yesterday, or I've come to realize is that my wishes are coming true.

So as somebody who is absolutely obsessed with vampire books, and also like that mid 2000s young adult fantasy extravaganza that happened, those trends are coming back.

And that's like, that's my bread and butter is like vampire stuff, as we want to like werewolves.

And just like, maybe not quite dystopian, but you know, like that, there was that huge dystopian, young adult dystopian, the thing that happened with like Hunger Games and, and all that fun stuff.

I think that's coming back.

I have, I feel like I've been seeing things online about people talking about those books.

Yeah, so that's...

Do you feel like, I was going to ask a question, but I was just talking to another writer friend as well.

Do you feel like dystopian is separate from like poster park?

No, I think that they are, they do go hand in hand, but they also do have slightly different branches.

Because I think like poster park was like surprisingly big during COVID, and now we're living sort of poster park.

People are maybe...

We are, we are definitely, yeah, a hundred percent.

That's how I feel like I'm living.

But yeah, I think things like Hunger Games is a slightly different, like an empowered poster park, right?

It's like you get to make the world in your own style.

I can see how people are sort of drifting towards that now.

I am sure these trends are coming back.

So I'm very excited because I don't like to...

Looking at, see what other people are doing is really good.

And like you say, it's hard to react to trends because there's just no time.

You just have to be writing books so fast, and that's not me at all.

But it's just nice to see that the trends do whip back around.

And so eventually, if you keep going, you'll catch a wave.

That's why I always tell myself.

That is a great way of thinking about it.

Yeah, if you just keep paddling your board, you'll catch a wave at some point.

But you have to be looking behind you to see when the waves are coming.

Yeah, so it's good to know what's going on, what the people are doing.

And then when your time comes, you're like, haha, watch me.

This is going to be great.

Yeah.

So when you're talking about having all your processes set up, I don't particularly have my processes set up, but I did set up loads of spreadsheets, which makes me feel like I've got things under control.

So I have like a finance spreadsheet.

I've got a spreadsheet, which I call my author Bible, which has all my timings on it.

So how long it takes me to write books, edit books and all that jazz.

So I have started looking at my own processes and my own times, which again, like all kind of ties into my looking at myself as a business, because it's important to know, like how you're running as a human being, so you can like schedule stuff.

And that's been really interesting.

I've written a short, well, I haven't quite finished editing yet, but I've written a short story, finished writing a book, edited a book and it's ready, it's with my formatter to be published, like this month.

How is this your cue on?

I'm going to come on to this.

So, I also like to set up some pre-orders for the year.

We started a podcast.

I came up with a new series idea, which I'm really looking forward to writing and I'm going to start that, I'm probably going to do that for my NaNoWriMo novel, to do my new story.

And I even set up Facebook ads and I've been building my Facebook page.

And yeah, I have really, stupidly, did so much.

And I think that's why I had a bit of a mental breakdown this afternoon.

Because I sat on my sofa, and I was making the list before I wrote it down, and I sat on my sofa thinking about what's on this list, and I thought, this isn't sustainable.

This is not a sustainable way.

Did it feel unsustainable before you tried to look at it though?

Were you feeling like you're starting to run an empty?

No, no, I don't.

This is my problem.

Don't listen to me.

No, because this is how I live my life.

I'm really, really, when I'm into something and I've made a decision to do something, this is like therapy session now.

Or we'll have a podcast with their impressions.

This is the perfect way.

This has been my entire life.

When I like something and I start it, and I make a decision to do something like every day, I'll do it every day.

Mm-hmm.

And I will do it and do it and do it and do it.

So I'll say like, I'm going to use yoga as an example.

So years ago, I did yoga every day.

I made a decision, I'm going to do yoga every day for a year.

And then three years later, I was still doing yoga every day.

And I forgot why.

And I didn't know.

I was just doing it.

And it was just something to be ticked off a list.

And I completely lost my goal though.

Like, I feel like I get nothing into...

I just, I can never get into habits.

I can get into routines, but I can never get things to be a habit.

This is like, it's a blessing and a curse.

Because it is a blessing, because when I make a decision to do something, I can just do it.

Like, it's like a switch in my brain.

And it's just like, yep, fine.

Like, that's who I am now.

But when I lose the reason why, because I've just been doing something like over and over again, that's when, like, I kind of, then I'll stop and I won't do it for, like, for ages.

So I haven't done yoga for over a year because I didn't know what I was doing it for.

And that's what I worry about.

If I continue at this pace, writing and editing and everything, will I get to a point where I think, why am I doing this?

And then stop because I've lost the reason.

So that's really why I was having a mental breakdown.

But I feel like if you were making a podcast, a weekly podcast about yoga, you would be remembering your why because you were talking about it every week.

So I feel like...

Yes, yeah.

Probably, but this is probably true because doing yoga, a lot of people will do it and they'll do it for the community.

Whereas I was doing it to do it on my own.

And I did it on my own every day.

And that is probably a huge reason why I lost the connection to it.

Because I wasn't really sharing the experience.

And I think that this...

I was talking about writing, and also this is my dream career that I want to do forever.

It does feel different, but I'm still a little bit scared that one day I will knee-jerk back out.

I saw you, I think on threads, saying you had started doing yoga again.

What pushed you back into that?

And how do you think you're going to maintain it?

I am going to maintain it for a while.

I have told myself I'll do it every day.

Why not?

My ceramics class is going to end this week, and I need something else to hyperfocus on.

I really wanted to just get back into it, because I haven't moved my body on purpose for a long time.

And also, I do feel like when spring comes around, I just get really excited.

I walk miles and miles a day.

I love walking.

I think I just got really excited about spring, and I was like, it's sunny, roll the yoga mat out.

Here we go again.

So it was very mood based.

I'm sure I will be better at it.

I say better at it.

I mean, I did it for three years without stopping, and I did really love it.

Yeah, I don't know.

Yeah, that is really interesting.

My whole brain.

Yeah.

Somebody needs to diagnose me with something.

I do think, yeah, I think to an extent, like the hamster wheel of writing is like the same thing.

It's like, keep going without questioning it, and you don't get any chance to question it, because if you question it, you'll fall off, and you will not be able to keep up the pace.

So it's almost like it's designed people who have a brain that works that way and to not do it that way.

Also, can I say I'm being absolutely surrounded by ladybirds?

They're just there everywhere.

It's like the birds, but on a very small scale.

Yeah, and there are those herbivorous ones, but there's more and more of them.

It's like a very low-rent Hitchcock film, but it's quite distracting.

Yeah, I do think you have to be incredibly deliberate to not do it in the rapid-release way.

And the people who are loudest are doing it that way.

And so it's really hard to see how else can I make it work.

And for me, this podcast is ideal.

When I think I've made no progress, I have made so much mindset progress, which is what I want to do.

I have not magically become a millionaire.

I have not magically published five books in this quarter, which I think is mine and I'm sure not just me default of success in self publishing.

It's like, have you published all the books?

Have you made all the money?

And there's so little way to measure.

Are you now aiming bigger?

Are you now thinking of your business a different way?

Yeah.

And it's like we're doing a tiny little MBA.

And with your tiny little MBA, even if you're doing a big MBA, you might spend the first year just learning theory and thinking about it before you start setting up a business.

Yeah.

And that I think has to feel fine.

Yes.

So much of what I've done is like changing the way the thing works.

I do feel like there's a way to do things that I haven't done, right?

So I have not really looked at the finance side of things.

I have not made myself a business loan, which I wanted to do.

And it just, I feel like in my head, it takes a lot of sitting down to do.

Because again, I want to be a perfectionist about it.

I want to, I made a business plan, but I haven't looked at it again.

But I want to make like the best business plan.

And I want to make it have like financial outcomes within two weeks.

And I want to make myself like the most perfect business loan.

And it's like, it's useful having these conversations with someone, I think, who thinks in ways that overlap with me, and are also very different to me to like have those things challenged and to look at them with like different eyes.

But I think we're often looking at the same things, but from different perspectives, which I think is really, really useful.

And it's, you know, just this mastermind, if that's the only thing I've got out of this quarter, that is the best thing ever.

Yeah.

Oh, yeah.

And I would say you won't count this as your success for this first quarter, but you have helped me like a lot, like a lot.

A ridiculous amount.

I wouldn't count that.

Yeah, you should add it to the top of your list, because without you, I wouldn't know.

Because, like I say, I've just buried my head in the sand.

I didn't know anything really about what I was doing until we started meeting and I was like, oh, right.

That's what I'm supposed to be doing.

So you already had a lot of knowledge and a lot of things in place that I didn't have, which I think is why my progress seems more like ridiculously over the top.

It's just because I've been, I've just set up stuff that you were already doing.

Oh my goodness, that is a fantastic way of looking at it.

I feel that is such a nice thing to hear and so good and useful.

I do really feel like I can feel myself letting go of the sense of perfectionism and the sense of like, I'm behind, I'm late.

And I wanted to recommend what I mentioned to you earlier, but also I want to recommend it as a podcast thing I'll put in the show notes.

And it is a podcast and it is called Wiser Than Me with Julie Louis Dreyfuss.

And it is older women in the creative arts usually.

So Amy Tan's on there, Sally Field, talking about things that are important to them and the way, often the way their perspective has changed throughout life.

And one thing that I have noticed that has raised it up to me, again, maybe it's because I'm listening to that, that stands out most, but maybe also being said a lot is several women have said, I really wish I could go back to, or the age I feel like is in my 40s.

God, I'd love to be in my 40s again.

And I was like, I'm about to hit 40 and it feels old.

It feels like a big number.

But all these women in their 70s and 80s like, yeah, gosh, I'd love to go back to my 40s, back when I could run, back when I felt confident.

I was like, I feel like I'm doing a really good job at the moment of taking in media, of taking in thoughts, of thinking about things that are helping rather than hindering me.

And like listen to this podcast is a great example.

I really want to listen to the wisdom of older women.

And I really want to take in the message that 40 is a great age to start stuff at.

And 40 is like a great age to be like, I'm taking the reins of my life.

It sounds scary, I know.

I am going to be 40 next year and it does seem insane.

But my sister just turned 40 this year.

Oh no, last year.

Yeah, it seems very grown up.

So my sister and all her friends turned 40 last year.

Some of them are turning 40 this year.

And I don't look at any of them as adults.

So it seems like when you're like in your 20s and 30s, thinking about somebody turning 40 seems like crazy.

But when you get there, like nobody actually seems like, nobody seems old.

And it does seem to be the age where everyone is finally at a stage where they're just like happier.

Like 20s, you just like, just doing whatever the hell you want and then like suffering the consequences.

30s, you kind of like getting into the swing of things and be like, oh, so this is what I can do with my life.

And like, this is how I can behave and I'm fine with that.

And I think the 40s for me is going to be like, this is when I just do whatever the hell I want.

Screw everyone else.

Yeah, but I think I really want to see it and I'm trying to work towards this year, like seeing it as like, it's a fantastic jumping off point.

Like I think I want to be ready by the time I hit 40, just be like, okay, I'm going to like hit the ground running.

I'm going to have got rid of, like I have decided by the time I'm 40, I will have ceased pursuing emotionally unavailable men.

That is like, I'm done with that in my 30s.

That's a good idea.

Right?

But I think like it's one of those things that you just, you don't confront about yourself, that you keep making the same choices and you're going to have distance.

And the same with like writing is like, I am going to stop being on a hamster wheel and I am going to, and just generally like I'm going to stop, you know, feeling like I am trying to take up just a small reasonable amount of space in the world.

Like I really want to just be standing at the next six months.

It's like clearing a runway for like, I'm going to take off.

Which just feels miles away from what I've thought before.

So I think this Q1 has felt like I have not, I haven't done any of the small things.

I haven't, for example, posted my Facebook every week because what I've been doing is changing my entire mindset and what I'm allowing myself to do and the space I'm taking up in the world.

Yeah.

You've definitely been doing way more mindset stuff.

That feels like part of self-publishing that you, that there's no 20 books post about that.

Yeah, there's just like, there's not enough talked about, about like what you need to do mindset wise to be able to say like, this is who I am, not what I do.

And I think for a lot of people, it comes naturally depending on how you've been raised or where you've been raised or your social standing in life or whether you've got somebody who is supporting you financially, you know, like literally anything.

There are so many things that people have going for them that they don't realize.

And the rest of us have to learn it a different way.

And it takes time, it takes a while to like read books and listen to other people's stories and internalize it and turn that into the things that maybe some people just have naturally.

But we have things, we have other things that come naturally to us that other people don't have.

So then you do also have people who maybe have just like the right mindset and the right confidence in themselves, but they don't know how to write a book or once they've written a book, they don't know how to edit it, whereas we already know that stuff.

So it all balances out.

I think that the mindset work that you're doing is definitely going to be one of the most beneficial things you've done forever.

Once you start writing and getting ready to publish, you'll look back at this and think, like, wow, I'm glad I did that for myself.

Yeah.

I sort of can't believe I've only done three months of this.

The amount that I have changed my way of thinking about what I can do writing-wise and business-wise just is enormous.

And yeah, I've maybe made more progress in the last three months, like, in my content, my business, more than I have in the entire rest time I've been self-publishing, which has been like, you know, three, four years.

So yeah, I think I have made a lot of progress.

It's just not things I could put in a good list at all.

You could just write a terrible list like I did.

No, I liked your list.

I think it was good.

I think it's also like, it's good to, again, as always, have us look at this in two different ways.

Like have us approaching where we're looking at the same questions, but from very different viewpoints.

And I'm really looking forward to our Q2.

We've got episodes planned.

They're coming up on like sort of like bringing big concept into action.

So we're looking at marketing in the writing next, because we're both at a stage of working on specific books.

So I am, yeah, very excited about my new series.

I'm very excited about my new book.

And it feels, yeah, it feels like I cannot wait to start telling people about it.

I also, I love that like this next stuff that we're going to talk about, which will be marketing stuff, is you're going to be thinking about this from the very first point of writing.

So you're going to be thinking about your marketing as you're writing.

And I'm going to be editing and thinking about marketing, like to drum up interest for something like I'm like further down the line.

So we're going to be looking at this from two different stages, which I think is like very fun and very exciting.

So yes, the next week's topic, we're starting the series that we're calling Writing as Marketing.

And the first episode is X Meets Y Marketing.

So what are your thoughts on this right now?

Yeah, I think it sounds like a really small topic, X Meets Y.

So we kind of came up with this on with this because we had a specific book that I had in my hand earlier meant to bring down to look at.

So imagine I've got this book here, which you have passed on your copy to me, which was like a real X Meets Y sensation.

And so the X Meets Y of that was Practical Magic Meets Gilmore Girls, which like instantly, I want to read it.

Like instantly, I'm like, I can feel it viscerally like in my chest, I'm like, give me, give me, give me.

I like I absolutely have to have it.

I love Practical Magic.

I love Gilmore Girls.

I know the feeling that's going to give me of just like the comfort, the fun, the humor, the like the freedom, the sass.

It's like I know everything I'm going to get from that.

And so I think we were talking about X Meets Y marketing when I was looking at kind of my new book, my new series, because I was trying to figure out how I could conceptualize of it in a, in a, because when I was talking about it, I was talking about it in a real round the house.

I was like, Oh, it's a mystery.

It's about someone who did this.

And then they come back home and they're, Oh, they're about to do this.

But actually if you go backwards, you have to do that.

And I was like, that's not a good pitch.

And like, I think an X Meets Y is a good elevator pitch for books.

And it's basically like thinking about basically two comp titles.

And we did a lot of talking about it.

I would say I absolutely hijacked one of our monthly face to face all game things.

And we maybe spent three hours talking about the X Meets Y, this specific book.

It was so much fun.

Yeah, it was great.

And also, I think the way in which we're thinking about it, we came up with a lot of answers like what is X Meets Y?

And even if you're not going to use it for marketing, I think we came down to like what we want to, why it's a good thing to think about, and what's hard about X Meets Y, and what's useful for X Meets Y to kind of challenge your work.

So I have got a lot of thoughts about it.

And I have been like with friends sort of based testing my X Meets Y for my new book and having some excellent responses.

So I might reveal that on next week's episode.

Yeah, very exciting.

I have one great X Meets Y, which I will talk about next week.

I'm just like, the best thing I've ever come up with, hands down.

I mean, just that, just the X Meets Y is like better than most books I've read.

Yes, that.

So it's my absolute like shining moment of any kind of marketing that I've ever done.

However, I've never been like that's the only one that I've ever come up with that I feel like I've actually got gold.

So I have always struggled with comp titles and still like with other books that I'm writing stuff still don't know like what the hell to do about them.

So I'm really looking forward to talking about it next week and trying to figure out if there is not a formula for it, but some sort of easier shortcut than just literally like Googling other titles in your genre.

Like there has to be some something else.

There has to be some some magic way.

So I'm looking forward to trying to figure that out.

Yeah, I think we've got a lot of thoughts on this.

I'm not sure we're quite at solutions yet, but maybe no.

I think I think the conversation will bring us to it because I think when we were looking at it last time, we were looking at it in in specific relation to a book.

And actually, we took about the abstract that will help us kind of figure out what's the best way to do X meets Y thinking, when's the best time to think about it.

And I would say for me, it turned out to be you should not do it after you've written 8000 words of the book.

And you realize you haven't gone X meets Y in there, because you have to throw it all away and start again.

Yes, that is also what I did.

Well, we'll be better than that next time once we've cracked the process.

Yeah, we will share our wisdom next week with listeners.

Thank you to everyone who's made it to this point with us.

And do subscribe.

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